Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-07-14
SOME HINTS ON STYLE.
Advice Which May be OF Value to
Newspaper Correspondents
Well the Style Of
The Paper for Whoss Columns You Write
The Sort of Contributions Wanted
by Leading Journals.
William II. INNS in The wrIter.

Study the style OF the paper to which
you are telegraphing. Notice how much
space it gives daily to telegraph news.
Notice with what sort Of news that space
is flied. Notice what kinds of dispatches
are printed il full, end what kinds Of dis
patches are condensed to g paragraph
Notice, more than anything else, the dis
position that is made of the dispatches
you yourself may send. Observe which
Of them are printed in full, loaded maybe,
or put in prominent place. Observe
which Of them are cut down, put into 8
paragraph, or edited IN the waste basket
In short time, If you will do this, you
will know pretty well what sort OF stuff
! your editor likes to get. II you ere wise,
! you Will satisfy his appetite for that sort
of stuff, and not try TO improve mis- taste
! by forcing on him matter which your OWL
! good Judgment assures you is better. lie
may not know what be wants; few edi-
| tors, perhaps, do; but he thinks he does
and that settles the matter as far as you
are concerned. As long as you act as his
correspondent, your own interest will
counsel you to DO as he wants you to do.
You can get your revenge, you know, by
regarding with silent contempt iudg-
ment that is so much inferior to yours.
You can never know the sort of news 6
paper wants until you study It's columns
every day to sec the sort of news il
prints. No one can tell you half SO well
as you can see for yourself if you viii
take The trouble to observe; and you will
find IN the end that the trouble you mgy
take in getting hold OF the style
Of 20 bol
well repaid, both in solid cash and in the
good opinion of the editor for whom you
are working. After you have got C. pretty
definite idea Of the style of your paper,
and OF the sort Of news it wants to re
Ceive from you, you have nothing TO do
but to live up TO your theories as we'll !
as you can. In the case of = paper like !
the Baltimore Sun or the Chicago /
Inter Ocean, perhaps this may not be @ |
difficult SIX. You must have good iUdg- !
ment. You must know solid news when |
you see il, and you must Judge accurately |
It's importance to the readers of your
paper. Brilliancy Of style and novelty in !
ideas are not required by such papers as
The Baltimore Sun or the Philadelphia .
Public Ledger. II you can tell to either I.
: p.siD story IN 9 straightforward way,
You viii please the night editor and you
will not startIe the readers Of the paper !
into commissions.
Il Is different when you have to deal .
with s newspaper like the Chicago Times,
the st. Louis Globe-DemOcrat the B0s-
ton GLOBE, the New York Herald or the .
Cincinnati Enquirer. These papers want
news, too, and good news, but they 90
not pretend TO be moral educators Of the |
community. They want news Of al kinds, /
or solid, and they want it
written brightly, at some length, and
with the peculiar skill Of the trained
newspaper man. None of the |
papers named Will regard the ques-
ton Of expense when there is real
news TO be got. Each Of them throws
sway every night st least half as mucL
news as it prints. All of them have
plenty of room, and su of them are al
ways crowded. There is dull news and
bright news in eli of them; routine news
that must be printed for the conservative
readers Of the paper; the ordinary run of
news for the general readers; and spicy,
news for the lovers Of the
weird, and to attract new readers.
The correspondent who serves onai OF
these papers well must keep alive all the
time, and he must be posted on every
thing that happens, from q brutal prize
Ugh, 10 q Methodist conference or Dap-
list convention. = spiCy elOpement case,
or g meeting OF scientific celebrities ne
must treat at equsl length, perhaps, and
each in its own way. News is Whist he
must look for; and everything
may be news 10 the CORE
spondent Of such papers as these.
His dispatches, so long es they are
vel! and brightly written, need not be
brilliant or pTOfOund-SJ. far as the
Western papers named Sre concerned at
east. They must be full Of meat.
Usually they are printed about as he
sends them, or else they are discarded
So long as he makes them
'meat5," ara uses good judgment shout
what he sends, he VIII get al0Ug all right.
lie must pursue different plan, how
ever, il dealing with closely edited pG-
5ers like the Chicago News or the New
York Sun. Papers like these two have
little room for Telegraph news, and the
news they print must be closely and
smartIy written. The correspondent who
serves them well has a more difficult task
-Bgn the correspondent Of On other sort
# p2per. He must have the faculty Of
fsiZiDg up" piece Of news, OF selling
1t once lis saliant feature, and of making
1 complete story, with q sensible point
10 it, in very few words. III
NOV of no better training for q CORES
0ondent than TO observe the way in
which the agile desk editor on such p2-
Der handles his dispatches. If the cor
is quick TO take 4 hint, end
lotiCes closely nov his specials are treat
ID, he viii learn more in month of seTv-
&c than ne can in g year of ordinary
work; and the training thst
lie gets will do him good service as far
IS his other papers are concerned. The ,
nan who might exactly suit the editor Of
he Cincinnati Enquirer would be dis
harged in 8 week from the Chicago !
Jews; but the correspondent whose brief ,
dispatches are printed exactly as ne :
writes them in the News can always have
II the space he wants in the Enquirer
nd he can usually ill it ell, too.